


Past Imperfect, Present Tense, Future Uncertain

by Thursday_Next



Category: Thursday Next - Jasper Fforde
Genre: Gen, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thursday_Next/pseuds/Thursday_Next
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Acheron Hades tries to trick Thursday into committing suicide. Fortunately, her dad shows up in the nick of time and takes her on a whistle stop tour of Christmases past, present and future to remind her who she really is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past Imperfect, Present Tense, Future Uncertain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prosodiical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Prosodiical!
> 
> Set and firmly grounded in the first Next book, and possibly not canon compliant with the ‘rules’ of fiction and time travel as defined in later books in the series. In writing this, I discovered the answer to the question ‘why do I never write Thursday Next fanfiction?’ (because humour is hard). I hope you find something to enjoy regardless!
> 
> Warnings for references to attempted suicide (think ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’) and terrible time travel related puns.
> 
> Alternate titles:  
> It’s a Wonderful Next  
> Next Christmas  
> A Nextmas Carol

They say that time waits for no man; obviously they have never met my father. His appearance right at that moment was certainly timely. Cometh the hour and all that. 

“Thursday!” he began, his smile fading as he caught sight of my exact situation. Which was, to be precise, dangling precariously over the edge of a bridge over the A419. “What in the bard’s name are you doing?”

What was I doing? Someone had been there. Talking. Saying… things. Utterly convincing things about how completely useless I was and how much better off the world would be without me. I’d got Filbert killed. I’d messed up every relationship I’d ever had. I was a disgrace to the name of Next. There was really no other option but to hurl myself off the bridge with no further delay. 

Yes, that was absolutely the right – the only – thing to do. I hoisted myself further up the railings. 

“Thursday this is madness, you don’t have to do this,” my father protested. But I did, I knew I did. It was right, it was necessary. My father waved one hand in front of my face but I wasn’t about to let him distract me. “Thursday, please, think of your poor mother! She’s already lost one child.”

Mother. The word meant something to me, but I couldn’t quite manage to conjure up a face to go with the name. I shook my head, focussed on my goal. Just as my foot reached the balustrade, my father grabbed my arm, muttering and swearing under his breath, cursing someone or something called _”bloody Hades”_. There was a stab of pain in my head, like the beginning of a migraine, and I felt as though there was something I ought to remember but couldn’t quite put my finger on. 

“Well, I’ll get in a lot of trouble for this,” my father said, “but desperate times and all that. Hold on to your hat, my girl.”

I had just about time to notice that I wasn’t even wearing a hat, and was about to point that out to my father, when there was a spinning sensation and I felt suddenly, violently ill. 

 

“I must have been right about that migraine,” I slurred as I blinked around at my surroundings. 

It looked like, but it couldn’t be, the family home in Swindon. What was more, it looked like (but couldn’t be) Swindon circa Christmas 1962. Either that, or everybody had suddenly decided to eat Christmas dinner in 60s fancy dress, and my mother had re-papered the walls in the dreadful flock wallpaper we’d once had. Either of which wouldn’t have been entirely out of the realms of possibility for my family, it had to be said. 

But what clinched it was how _young_ everybody looked. I could see myself at 12. It was an awkward age, let’s just leave it at that. My nose was too big for my face and my hair stringy. I was dressed in a red baggy jumper, clearly a hand-me-down. Anton was sat next to me, nose in a book even as mum dished up the sprouts. 

I remembered that book, 101 Jokes. I’d pilfered it from Anton’s room on Boxing Day and studied it quite seriously in a bid to prove to Joffy that I did indeed have a sense of humour. Looking back on it, I could see his point. 

I felt certain that if we went up to my room we would find my stuffed Dodo and posters of Rhotic Glossop on the wall. Although that would probably still be the case in 1985.

“Dad, what’s going on? I don’t understand.”

He sighed.

“Sorry, petal, but it was all I could think of. It’s against any number of international conventions, so for goodness’ sake don’t speak to anyone. We’re observers, nothing more.”

And so I observed. As well as my parents, and my brothers and I, there was Uncle Mycroft and Aunt Polly, as well as Aunt Azalea. I was always a little hazy on exactly how Aunt Azalea was related to the rest of us, but with time travellers in the family, that was the sort of thing you learned pretty early on not to question. I could see a teenage Joffy smack my 12-year old self on the head as he walked past to take his seat.

I couldn’t hear what they were all saying with the window between us, but I remembered that Christmas. Aunt Azalea had spent most of the meal trying to get me to sit up straight, mum and dad had had an argument about how to spell the word existentialism, Joffy had sneaked out to a Quaker meeting with some boy he was hopeless at pretending he didn’t fancy, and Uncle Mycroft had somehow set fire to the kitchen while doing the washing-up… I _remembered_.

“Dad,” I began, uncertainly. “I…”

“Good, Thursday, it’s coming back to you. Time to move on.”

 

The spinning sensation was back. I shut my eyes tight, and when I opened them I knew exactly where I was. The Crimea wasn’t exactly the sort of place you forgot. I felt the sense of despair that had overcome me on the bridge return with a vengeance.

The rows of khaki tents, the chatter or men and women off-duty… half of these people were dead, now. Then. In the present. Future. Whenever.

But they were alive now. Then. Whenever. In front of my eyes. Laughing and eating and drinking and shoving each other. There were a few strings of rather sorry looking tinsel strung up over the mess tent, and in one corner a few of the men and women of the 5th Mercian Parachute Infantry were doing an impromptu performance of A Christmas Carol, keeping the old traditions going. They’d raided the medical supplies for bandages for Marley’s ghost and were currently mid-way through telling Scrooge to change his ways.

That’s when it hit me. 

I rubbed my jaw.

Then I realised something.

“It’s Christmas.” I turned and grabbed my dad’s sleeve. “It was Christmas at mum’s house, and now. But when you found me on the bridge it was only September!”

“Ah. Yes. Well, this sort of thing… it only really works at Christmas. It’s a sort of a… well, a loophole.”

“A loophole?”

My father had once described time as like a river. Flowing constantly, but cyclical, bends and dams along the way. And oxbow lakes. Places where events were preserved regardless of the flow of time around them. 

“Well, no, not exactly, but that makes a bit more sense than calling it a Christmas miracle, don’t you think?”

“It makes more sense than a Christmas miracle in September, certainly,” I said, but was distracted suddenly by the appearance of a very familiar figure. 

_Landen_

He had more of his own hair and more of his own limbs than when I’d seen him last, and that crooked smile which had drawn me to him in the first place. 

He wasn’t alone, signalling furtively to a mousy-haired companion as he disappeared behind the tents with a grin that was downright saucy. I opened my mouth to say I really wasn’t sure I wanted to see this, when the mousy-haired girl flicked her mousy hair away from her face.

It wasn’t at all like looking in a mirror, seeing yourself from the outside. For a start, left and right were all muddled up. My first instinct was to rush up to younger-Thursday and tell me my fringe was all wrong. But parting aside, it was my smile that surprised me. I looked young and in love and _happy_ and it gave me (thirty-something, boyfriendless me) a sharp pang in the stomach.

I remembered this, too, the sneaking around, hand-holding and general topsy-turviness of those first few months. The sense of infinite possibility. I took one step forward involuntarily, before my father closed one hand around my arm, shaking his head.

 

*

 

The next stop was the eighties once more. One of any number of Christmases where I turned up late to dinner, citing incredibly important SpecOps business rather than the true culprits – two thirds of a bottle of Soave and a dodgy alarm clock. My mother always pretended to believe me, mollified by the presentation of a wheel of contraband cheese and a…

Why did that wheel of cheese have a third missing? I turned and glared accusingly at my father.

“You said we couldn’t interfere.”

“I'm hungry. I haven't eaten since later this afternoon. Besides, I’m already wanted for time crimes across several different centuries, a little nibble of cheese won’t make much difference.”

“Look, Dad, I get it now. I do. I remember exactly who I am, and I assure you I no longer have any desire to throw myself onto the A419 at rush hour. Can we get back to the present so I can get on with catching Hades?” I paused. 

“Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. We have to do past, present and future.”

Everything began to spin once more.

 

*

When my eyes blinked open, I was alone. 

“Dad?” I called, but there was no response.

There was something unusual about my surroundings. Something not quite… real. 

But that wasn’t the only strange thing. 

The door opened and I walked in.

I could see myself, not much older, but unmistakeably bigger, one hand resting protectively on my belly.

And well. That was something to live for if nothing else. Hades was going to pay for trying to take this future from me.

Future Thursday turned and looked me dead in the eye.

“Oh balls,” she said. “Not another one.”

“What?” I managed, taken aback by being seen.

“Yes, I almost single-handedly defeated Acheron Hades, saved Jane Eyre and reunited Jane and Mr. Rochester. But this,” she waved a hand at me, “is getting ridiculous.”

“I… beg your pardon?” I tried, wondering if I really had done all of those things. Would do all of those things. Thursday’s mention of Mr. Rochester nagged at something in my memory and I got an uneasy feeling about the place we were both standing in right now, with its particularly cold stone floor and unnaturally bright blue sky.

“Fanfiction,” she scoffed. “Honestly.”

“I’m as real as you are,” I insisted. “Ask me who’s there.”

“Who’s there?” she asked impatiently.

“A time-traveller.”

“A time-traveller who?”

“Knock Knock.”

And with that, all went white.

 

*

I opened my eyes to find myself back in the present. I climbed carefully down onto solid ground, only shaking slightly. 

“Alright?” my father asked. “No more suicidal urges?”

“Definitely not. He won’t get the better of me again,” I shook my head determinedly. Somehow I knew it was true. I would defeat Hades. And save… “Dad, wait! What I saw in the future, was that… real?”

“Well, real is a relative concept. You should know that better than anyone.” He frowned. “Or maybe you haven’t discovered that yet.”

“But –“

“Thursday. Don’t forget that the best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

And he was gone again.

I blinked.

I wasn’t sure exactly why I was standing on a bridge on the A419. But I knew two things: I had to find Acheron Hades before he caused any more damage. 

And I absolutely had to be on time to my mum’s dinner that Christmas.

p


End file.
